College Football Stars Bring Their Speed to the Track

In football, swift bursts of power help running backs break through the opposing team’s front line and wide receivers outsprint defenders to chase down their quarterback’s passes, while cornerbacks and safeties have to be every bit as fast to thwart those wide receivers. It makes perfect sense, then, that some of the greatest players in the history of football, like Bob Hayes, Rod Woodson, and Herschel Walker, also had world-class credentials in track.

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Will any current collegians match the two-sport process of Hayes, Woodson, and Walker? The U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association maintains a list of this indoor season's top track and field marks by collegiate football players. Not surprisingly, the two men with the fastest 60-meter times on the list boast flashy football statistics.

Desmond Lawrence, who has a season's best of 6.62 seconds for 60 meters, is a running back and receiver for North Carolina A&T who had 42 catches for 386 yards and rushed 21 times for 193 yards during last fall’s football season.

Kolby Listenbee, a sophomore at Texas Christian, is second on the 60-meter list, with a 6.68 last month. For one of top college programs in the country, he caught 41 passes for 753 yards in 2014. If anyone on the USTFCCCA indoor track list has an NFL future, Listenbee is probably the guy.

Tony Brown, who’s done the 60-meter hurdles in 7.89, and Kebba Nasso, who has run 48.68 for 400 meters this season, have seen limited action as defensive backs for Alabama and Rhode Island, respectively.

John Hill, a Princeton junior who started all ten football games at cornerback this fall and had nine tackles in the season finale against Dartmouth, is the Ivy League sprint standout with a 6.85 in the 60.

By comparison, the fastest 60-meter time so far this year is 6.48, by Kim Collins. The leading 60-meter hurdles time of 2015 is 7.51, by Dimitri Bascou.

Joe Jensen, who was an All-New England Small College Athletic Conference wide receiver for Hamilton College in 2013 and is now identified on the USTFCCCA list as a quarterback, has the second best NCAA Division III 400-meter time of the winter, 49.13. The world-leading time for the indoor season is 45.34, by Najee Glass.

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As you might expect, distance runners do not show up on many football rosters. The only one on the USTFCCCA list is Ahmad Nesbitt, a junior at North Greenville University in South Carolina. He’s run 5000 meters in 14:53.06 and 3000 meters in 8:39.53 this season, and though he was on his school’s roster as a defensive back in his freshman year, he’s been on the cross country squad in subsequent seasons.

Devon Allen of the University of Oregon deserves a category all his own. Allen was one of the top receivers on the Ducks team that made it to the national championship football game in January (and lost to Ohio State), though he was injured and didn’t play in that contest.

Outdoors, he is the reigning 110-meter hurdles champion and, in a genuine shocker, he won at the USATF Championships, too, becoming the first hurdler to achieve that double since Renaldo Nehemiah in 1979. Allen hasn’t raced indoors, but his future in both of his chosen sports is bright.

How do young men like Lawrence, Listenbee, and Brown measure up against some of their more accomplished football and track athletes?

Bob Hayes, a football at Florida A&M, was also the first person to break 6.0 in the 60-yard dash. Hayes was the gold medalist in the 100-meter dash and the 4 x 100-meter relay at the 1964 Olympics. He went on to a Hall of Fame career with the Dallas Cowboys; he’s the only man to earn an Olympic gold medal and a Super Bowl ring.

Ron Brown, a football standout at Arizona State, ran 60 meters indoors in 6.64. He was on the second leg on the U.S. gold medal 4 x 100 relay at the 1984 Olympics and later played for pro football's Rams and Raiders from 1984 to 1991.

Darrell Green ran 50 meters in 5.76 indoors for Texas A&M-Kingsville, where he was the Lone Star Conference MVP in football. He later played 19 seasons with the Washington Redskins as a defensive back and was voted into the NFL Hall of Fame.

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Herschel Walker, a Heisman Trophy winner as college football’s top player at the University of Georgia in 1982, ran 55 meters indoors in 6.11. The best years of Walker’s Hall of Fame career as a running back were with the Dallas Cowboys. Later, he was a bobsledder in the 1992 Winter Olympics.

Willie Gault of the University of Tennessee did the 55-meter hurdles in 6.96 and the 60-meter hurdles in 7.67. He was part of the U.S. gold medal 4 x 100-relay team with Carl Lewis at the 1983 World Championships before an 11-year NFL career with the Chicago Bears (catching a 70-yard touchdown pass in the Super Bowl) and the Los Angeles Raiders. As a masters track athlete, he set world records in the 50-54 age group in the 100 (10.88) and 200 (22.44).

Rod Woodson of Purdue was second in the NCAA Indoor 55-meter hurdles in 1985; he did the 60-meter hurdles in 7.61 and the “flat” 60 in 6.70. Woodson went on to become one of the greatest cornerbacks in pro football history and has the NFL record for most interceptions returned for touchdowns (12).

Jeff Demps, a running back at the University of Florida who most recently signed with the Indianapolis Colts, ran the 60 in 6.52 seconds in 2012. He was a 2012 Olympic 4 x 100 relay silver medalist after running in a prelim.

Earl McCulloch, a wide receiver at USC, won the 55-meter indoor hurdles at the 1968 NCAA Indoor championships in 7.0 and was a two-time NCAA 110-meter hurdles winner outdoors. McCulloch was a true top-tier athlete in two sports, and would have been at the very least a co-favorite with Willie Davenport in the hurdles at the 1968 Olympics. But there was no living to made in track at the time, so McCulloch skipped the Olympics, went directly into the NFL and was the league’s Offensive Rookie of the Year for the Detroit Lions.

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At USC, McCulloch was a football and track teammate of O.J. Simpson, who first made national headlines on the track. He and McCulloch were part of a University of Southern California team that set a world record of 38.6 in the 4 x 110-yard relay. Because the metric system was fully in place in track and field shortly after, even at American universities, that mark has never been broken and probably never will be.

The video below shows Willie Gault running second on the winning 4 x 100 U.S. team at the 1983 World Championships.

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